


Another Missed Opportunity

by newest_fanfic_writer



Series: A Time for Everything [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Hospitals, John figuring some stuff out, Me figuring some stuff out, but it's not really death because it wasn't alive?, quick one shots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 01:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7338745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newest_fanfic_writer/pseuds/newest_fanfic_writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A time to be born and a time to die,</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Missed Opportunity

**Author's Note:**

> This will be the first of a series that will be quick(and when I say quick I mean quick) one shots following the format of Ecclesiastes 3, 1-8 otherwise knows as "A Time for Everything", which I will post at the end of this work for those who are curious about how it will be. It won't be ordered chronologically time-wise, but rather by the poem/verse whatever you want to call it. Some of these will be very sad, but I promise the last one will end happy. Here goes!
> 
> Set after Season 3

John had been in many hospital rooms in his life. From the time he was 10, he knew the inside of a hospital more intimately than his own heart. Or perhaps they were the same in the end. Because every time he was inside a hospital, it seemed that he left a little of his heart behind. He remembered his mother, and her long, slow, torturous death from cancer and little boy John telling himself that he was exploring the hospital, when really he was just trying to escape her room, and the way his father's face was becoming as gaunt as his mother's and the way she slept more and more and the way the nurses would look at them with such pity. He remembered the first patient to die under his hands, how his heart stopped beating, how they tried to resuscitate him but it didn't work, how they pulled their hands away from his broken, mangled body from the car accident, and how he blamed no one but himself, how he was wracked with guilt for the boy who was just barely younger than himself. He remembered his many army buddies dying in little shacks that could barely be called hospitals, their bright red blood that represented their whole lives spilled out on the drab, plain sand that greedily drank it like it would never be able to take enough. He remembered Sherlock, his best friend, the man who he had saved and who had saved him so many times over bleeding out under his hands from the almost fatal wound that his own wife had put there. But he had never been in a hospital room that was so determined to give life.

The maternity wing, something he had always known about, but never truly gone to. They never really seemed to fit in John's view of a hospital. To John, hospitals always meant death. As a doctor, he could manage to miraculously save people, but the hospital itself seemed to be designed for death. The sterile white walls and gleaming machinery with no life, no air. The way everything was clean, so clean, lacking the messiness, the chaos that could make life painful, but at least always made it interesting. The way that the people were always so quiet like they were already at a funeral. The way that footsteps were quick and eyes averted, not wanting to see other's pain. The way that sometimes the only sound was soft sobbing. Even for the ones that lived, a little bit of themselves died in the hospital. 

The maternity wing was different from the rest of the rooms. Yes, the halls were still white, but inside the rooms were painted bright colors, happy and smiling. Blues and yellows and pinks were bandied about like a child plays with jelly beans. There was loud, raucous noise that only life could make. There were soft blankets and a terrible, wonderful, all-consuming messiness that gave birth to a living creature. This wing, this wing, was so very determined to mean life in a place that only showed death.

But sometimes it failed. 

And then the bright walls and the soft blankets and the messiness mocked the humans within. The noise would go deadly silent, more silent than a crypt, more still than a tomb. It's funny how the absence of one person, who had never really been alive to begin with, can create this much pain in every person within. Funny, hilarious in fact. Hilarious in the way that war, with its chaos and illogic and stupidity and pointlessness, was hilarious to soldiers. John understood how hilarious it could be. Manic laughter rose in John's throat, but he repressed it, his mind not wanting to wake a child that had never been alive to begin with.

He held his daughter in his arms, held her so tightly, even though she was so cold. He held her as if by some power, he would be able to transmute his own warmth, his own life into her. He touched her blue face, imagining it starting to turn pink with the color of life, and her little mouth opening in a scream to condemn the world for bringing her out into such a place. He held her, and he held her. He ignored the looks that the nurses and the doctor were giving him, pitying but also practiced. He ignored his wife's averted gaze that was glazed over in pain and starting to close from the sedatives. He ignored everything but the little bundle in his arms which had once represented a way to mend his relationship but now was just another missed opportunity. 

So many missed opportunities in his life. Too many for one person.

Someone took his daughter from him. He didn't even know who. His eyes remained on his empty hands. They had never even given her a name. Another missed opportunity. 

He looked down at his wife, now sleeping, and knew that it was not her he wanted to wrap in his arms, or her arms to wrap around him. He knew that this woman was not the person he loved, but he knew also that the band around his finger chained him to her in a way that he had never thought he'd break. There was one person that he wanted to comfort him in this moment. Just one. And as he put his head in his arms, he knew that was just another missed opportunity.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a time for everything,  
> and a season for every activity under the heavens:  
> a time to be born and a time to die,  
> a time to plant and a time to uproot,  
> a time to kill and a time to heal,  
> a time to tear down and a time to build,  
> a time to weep and a time to laugh,  
> a time to mourn and a time to dance,  
> a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,  
> a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,  
> a time to search and a time to give up,  
> a time to keep and a time to throw away,  
> a time to tear and a time to mend,  
> a time to be silent and a time to speak,  
> a time to love and a time to hate,  
> a time for war and a time for peace.


End file.
